In the Land of the Sunbeam Bunnies [antikvár]

1. THE REFUGE OF KIND FRIENDS On the shore of a warm sea, amid evergreen forests, blue hills, and sunny valleys, lies Freckleiand. Its inhabitants, the Freck-lelanders, are covered w^ith freckles from head to toe. Young and old, men and women, they are all freckled. Even the animals and birds are freckled: there are freckled horses and cows, freckled elephants, bears and crocodiles and freckled cats and dogs. And what is more, even the flies and mosquitoes there are sprinkled with freckles. The Frecklelanders had lived here since olden times. They were a quiet, peaceful, hard-working people who had magic orchards with trees of sweets that you wouldn't find anywhere else in the world. Twice a year, they gathered tasty chocolate fruit from these trees. The Frecklelanders were very fond of children and grew chocolate trees just because their fruit brought joy to the boys and girls. Freckleiand was once a free, independent country. And although its freckled citizens were uneducated and could neither read nor write, they knew nothing of slavery or cruelty. But one day, foreign ships under black sails entered the Bay of Please in Freckleiand. It was a flotilla from a far-off land called Hooligania. The Hooliganian army spilled out onto the shore and occupied the whole of Freckleiand. They started to plunder and destroy the country and to bully its people. The Hooliganians forced the Frecklelanders to work for them day and night.